


the opposite of a good idea

by Prinzenhasserin



Category: Gentleman Bastard Sequence - Scott Lynch
Genre: And then for Fun, Crossdressing, Crossdressing for Crime, Facial Shaving, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-11 10:37:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12933468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/pseuds/Prinzenhasserin
Summary: Jean and Locke have to get creative to leave town. (Locke looks surprisingly comfortable dressed in women’s clothing.)





	the opposite of a good idea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!  
> (Thank you, iberiandoctor, for betaing this so quickly when I was freaking out. All remaining mistakes are mine!)

"It’s a stupid idea," Jean repeats what must be the dozenth time. "I have no idea why I agreed to it." Locke can’t hear him, because he’s currently dressing himself as a woman—on account on the city watch looking for two male persons of interest trying to get out of the city, instead of a newly wed pair. It is possibly the stupidest idea that’s ever been conceived, but Jean went out to get Locke a bunch of women’s clothes and ornamentation anyway. 

A few minutes later, Locke calls out, "Can you look at this, Jean?"

When he comes in, Locke is standing half-naked in front of the mirror, trying to shave his face.

"I can’t see," he says plaintively, and Jean sighs and steps closer. He should have expected something like this, really, seeing at how dark it is in the tiny room in the attic of the inn. It isn’t as if Locke is normally such a good shaver, and now everything hinges on the closeness of the shave.

Locke’s face is already lathered in soap, and so Jean only takes the sharpened razor blade in one hand and Locke’s chin in the other.

"What are you doing," Locke protests immediately, as Jean starts clearing the soap in long, confident stripes. "Hold still," Jean says and thanks the gods he doesn’t nick Locke when he started moving. "This is difficult enough to do for someone else, I don’t need you blathering on."

Locke holds still, obvious reluctance shining in his eyes.

Jean continues slowly clearing off the soap and the hair — Father Chains had made him do it often, and he is practised even on a moving target like Locke who could never sit still for more than the second it took him to plan something. It’s soothing work; Jean likes to do it, normally.

Locke smells like vanilla and something flowery, and while that isn’t something he smells of usually, it creates a strange sort of harmony— it goes to Jean’s head. Was probably meant to do exactly that.

"Done," Jean says, with a rough voice. It is strange how much Locke looked like himself — and yet he also most definitely made a convincing woman. 

"Now, shoo," Locke says. "There needs to be a certain mystery in this relationship. You’d never look at me if you knew where my hips came from."

"You don’t have hips," Jean says, dazed and very much confused.

"Not yet—which only proves my argument."

"Sure," Jean says, and conveys all his scepticism with that one word.

Locke disregards everything Jean has said, as usual, and goes to put on weird rolls of cloth designed, apparently, to give him hips.

Jean rolls his eyes and leaves the room, trying to find his tie in the semi-dark room, lit only from the few sparse rays that could find their way through the tarnished windows. The City of Port has eerie blue lights that lined the streets, unlike Camorr with its green fluorescence, and it took some time to get used to, more time than they currently have. The cravat is the same scarlet colour of Locke’s skirt— and Jean lifted it from the tailor because once he saw it he couldn’t have let it go. Looking at his face in the mirror, he grimaces. A merchant of this city would probably dress more flamboyantly, but this was something his father would have dressed in, and he couldn’t let go of his roots— hopefully Locke wasn’t going to notice his nostalgia.

When he hears continued cursing from downstairs, Jean goes to look at Locke again. He has already assumed a voice slightly different from his natural one, a little bit of foreign tang, but definitely female in inflection.

"Darn the Lady!" he curses, and it sounded so incongruous—Jean laughs. Until he sees Locke for himself, that is, because he looks like a woman. And it isn’t— there must be someone messing with Jean’s brain, because it didn’t look like—Locke looks entirely natural dressed this way. It is disconcerting, and baffling, and Jean didn’t know what to do with himself.

"Could you possibly help me pin my unmentionables in place?" Locke asks, and it could have come out of Duchess’s mouth for all that Jean knew. He has practised accents and dialects, as well as Locke had, Father Chains had insisted, but he never had to learn the female forms as well.

"You are ridiculous," Jean says, instead of anything more revealing, and pins Locke’s placard to his chest. 

The dress Locke is wearing is low-cut, and Jean doesn’t know through what sorcery, but Locke has what can only be described as nicely sized breasts, their curves very apparent from his standpoint.

"Do you think I should hide my throat with a choker?" Locke asks. He sounds more normal. The costume isn’t such a great incongruity, now. Locke dresses up often for cons — it is not at all unusual, Jean tells himself, again. He swallows and clears his throat. Did the inn have to keep her rooms so warm?

"Looks fine the way it is," Jean manages to get out.

Locke arches his neck back, the pale expanse tantalising in the low light. Jean is desperate to set his teeth against it, pepper it with kisses, bite the tendon that’s visible— he does not think anyone would look at the prominence of his larynx, when they could look at the rest of Locke’s body. "Really?" Locke asks, and he has to take a second to remember what the conversation has been about.

"You don’t want to draw any sort of attention to your neck," Jean says after clearing his throat again. "Maybe a locket dangling all the way down your—" he does not mention Locke’s breasts because he is faintly shocked by their existence, and also isn’t sure if it wasn’t an illusion created by the Crooked Warden knew what.

It is a doozy getting a ticket for the ferry after arriving with Locke. Locke manages to flirt with the ticket manager in a way that definitely shows his attachment to Jean, and was prepared to hang onto him forever, but also in a way he would stay on the mind of the ticket master— and definitely in the guise of a woman. They slip into the tiny room on the passenger freighter they managed to get, undisturbed by the rest of the crew, and only leave their cabin after the ship has already left port. 

 

"It’s a stupid idea," Jean doesn’t say out loud, as he watches Locke flirt with the seamen. He isn’t doing it to lead them on, just making fun of the staunchness of his husband, his stoic companionship — mostly to rile Jean up.

Jean is riled up. Jean has been riled up since the first time he saw Locke try on the stockings he had brought, when he looked up, still entirely male, and pronounced them, "Passable." Jean had been riled up since he met young Locke in Father Chains‘ basement, and the other had teased him about the colour of his hair. A little bit of flirting isn’t going to rile him up much more, or so he’d like to think.

He’s not going to say anything, he promises himself, and he is rewarded when Locke comes to his arms at the end of the night of too much flirting and completely trashed.

 

It is the opposite of a good idea, Jean thinks, stroking down the inside of Locke’s thigh. It is too late, too, to have this kind of thought, a couple of minutes into this new benefit of his relationship with Locke.

Locke is already only wearing silk garters and a thin shift— the shift unremarkably boring in white, but not at all boring hanging on Locke— ending just above the slight curve of Locke’s ass, leaving his garter-clad thighs free for him to admire.

You aren’t supposed to shit where you eat. Or fuck. Jean may be mixing his metaphors, but this whole area, with Locke, is unprecedented.

Most of the things he does for Locke, most of the things he does with Locke, are unprecedented. It is alarming how little he cares sometimes. But about this—Jean doesn’t think he will be able to deal very well with the inevitable outcome, when Sabetha comes back, or Locke finds another redhead to obsess over. It’s not too late to say no, he thinks to himself, and watches Locke lean into his caresses not unlike a cat, and knows he is lying to himself.

He pinches Locke’s butt, just because he can, and to elicit that nice noise he makes, of turned-on outrage.

"Stop playing with your gift, and unwrap it," Locke complains, and squirms more firmly into Jean’s lap.

Jean obliges, and slips his hand underneath the shift. He’s touching Locke only lightly, because he is a demanding little shit who could do with a little more begging, or at least pleading, until Jean touches him where he wants to be touched, and takes the shift with it.

Locke arches into the hand on his spine, graceful, cat-like; and he’s right— Locke is a gift, a gift that keeps on giving, and is slightly outrageous in its upkeep, and Jean may be mixing his metaphors again.

"Come on," he says, and it’s the demanding tone that does Jean in, always. "Halflight isn’t going to last forever. If you don’t hurry up I’ll get the captain to scratch my itch, I’m certain he’ll oblige me much faster than you."

Jean leans forward, slips the shift over Locke’s head, and then sets his mouth next to his ear. "You’re free to look for him any time," he calls his bluff, and Locke moans. It’s a low moan, more frustration than satisfaction, and he starts squirming again on Jean’s knee. Jean can feel a wet spot starting to expand on his pants, can hear the slow pant of Locke, trying to get himself off without Jean’s help. He presses a large hand on the small of Locke’s back. Underneath the pressure, Locke stills. "But you want me, don’t you. You need me to get you off, and not the captain, or his first mate, or any of the other crew. I could string you up on the frontmast, and you would still beg me to attend to you, wouldn’t you?"

"Yes," Locke says, and it’s strangely satisfying that this isn’t the easy way, sex between them could not have more complicated circumstances. It's easy to touch Locke nonetheless, it's easy to make him shudder with pleasure at Jean's hands, at Jean's mouth, at anything Jean tries to give him.

"Tell me you want me," Jean says, because he wants to hear it desperately, even if it’s only true for now.

"I want you," Locke says, breathing hard but without any hesitation. Jean’s hand was already on the way to Locke’s cock to provide some relief— Jean never tried to extend these games artificially, but he’s also never gotten an actual answer to his dirty talk before, and it feels like the heart in his chest is suddenly unfettered, soaring over the red seas on the back of the Crooked Warden’s rook— his hand stutters, doesn’t quite make the connection.

"Jean," Locke says plaintively. "Please."

And that’s like a gut-punch, it hurts so badly, and Jean pulls on Locke’s cock, once, twice, increasing into a proper rhythm. Locke’s groans are building steadily, but Jean can’t quite focus on what he’s doing— he wants Locke to mean it, he wants Locke for always, for the rest of their cursed, forsaken lives, and he can’t quite think enough of how he’s supposed to do that, and get Locke and himself off at the same time.

And then Locke spurts his relief all over Jean’s pants, and Jean notices that the ache in his body is mirrored in the ache of his cock, and it’s all sorts of messed up in his head.

Locke turns around, his eyes quite unconsciously at halfmast, and oh so devastating, "Want me to suck you?"

And Jean wants, wants everything, wants Locke on his knees, where he can keep an eye on him, and Locke fluidly sinks down as if he was born to it, as if he hadn’t been a fucking bondsmagi in his past life, and in unobtainable love with his sister priestess for the other half, licks and swallows and wets Jean’s cock.

Jean groans, and in reaction someone pounds on the cabin door. It’s accompanied by a loud, "Keep it down! Or share, so we can all have a taste of that saucy little shit," and Jean takes exception to that, really, he would like to pound this wise-ass’s face in, but Locke twists his tongue so, and then Jean spills in his mouth, and revenge is the furthest from his mind.

"What will you do," he begins to ask, and then he has to continue, or Locke will know how much he affects him and that’s not a thing he wants, but it’s also torture to ask that kind of question. "when we arrive on land, where this isn’t—"

Locke slides down one of his silky stockings against his legs, and it’s probably unintentional, though who even knows with Locke. Jean lays his hand on the rolled up edge of the stocking and stills the motion. "Locke, really. What are we doing here?"

"I was having sex with you," Locke says, and Jean knows that he is prevaricating. 

"—Yes," Jean agrees after a long moment. "So we were. Was it the wine?"

"You know it wasn’t the wine," Locke says, and looks into Jean’s face. It’s almost imperceptible, could be a trick of the light, but he’s not looking him in the eyes.

"We could say it was, and forget about the entire thing." He does not want to forget about the entire thing. He wants to stroke up and down Locke’s silk clad legs, maybe divest him of the stockings and enjoy him entirely naked.

"We could," Locke agrees, and Jean goes cold, and tries to shuffle back. But then Locke says, "Or we could continue now, and then continue later."

"Because it is convenient?" Jean asks, and it’s a bit sharp, but he also takes a hold of the back of Locke’s legs and aligns their dicks so he can manhandle them better.

Locke laughs — it’s high, and reedy. "If there was anyone more inconvenient to have a relationship with, it’d be you, Jean Tannen."

If he hadn’t laughed so desperately, if he hadn’t looked like he was being wrung dry even though Jean hadn’t even touched him properly yet, if—but all those things are true, and so Jean asks, "Why?"

"You are an idiot, and I love you," says Locke Lamora. Jean’s grip on them slips, and Locke says, "Harder, you idiot!" and that is much more in-character and believable, and for the next several minutes he keeps them on the matter that is most relevant at the moment.

Locke’s high-pitched noises are all the instruction he needs to continue wanking them both, and soon, they spill over, Jean faster than Locke — he uses it as additional lubrication for the steady slide and drag, and then Locke is coming in his hands. Jean wants this always.

It is sticky, and it smells like sea water and sex, and Jean could not mind less.

Locke falls over into the small bed in the cabin. Then, he tries wrangling himself out of the dress, which skirts need a thorough scrubbing. And still Jean is unbearably attracted to him.

He smiles, goes to help him figure a way out of the entrapments, and then Locke looks up at him, naked.

"It’s a most terrible idea," Jean says, and doesn’t mention all the doubts he has, because he’s sure Locke has counterarguments prepared. He has that look about him.

"No, it isn’t," Locke says, and that’s the end of it. Jean isn’t going to argue, not about this, not when he has what he wants, and it looks like it might be his to keep. He kisses him, instead.


End file.
